Photos available upon request.
San Francisco, CA – A wave of demonstrations and blockades by indigenous communities angry at a “free trade” deal with the United States, swept across the Peruvian Amazon over the weekend. The actions coincided with UN-declared Indigenous Peoples Day.
Called by Peru’s national indigenous organization AIDESEP in response to recent attempts to weaken indigenous land rights, the nonviolent protests continue into their third day and cover four Amazonian regions. The actions include a 600-person peaceful take over of Perupetro’s Station-5 installation by indigenous Awajun in the northern Loreto district; a similar sized take-over of the Aramango hydroelectric plant in the Amazonas district; and a take over by nearly 2,000 Machiguenga community members of ten barges belonging to Hunt Oil and Pluspetrol’s controversial Camisea gas project in the Lower Urubamba.
The protests are part of a wider range of public demonstrations by rural communities across the country, including in the Andes, who believe the free trade agreement (FTA) will reduce their standard of living and that the administration of Peru President Alan Garcia is already breaking the letter and spirit of the proposed deal by weakening environmental and social safeguards.
Indigenous people of Peru are unhappy with a range of decrees fast-tracked by the Garcia administration during 2008 to ready Peru for the FTA, which was passed by last year by both the US House of Representatives and Senate, to come into effect.
Under the terms of the treaty, Peru has committed to strengthen its environmental institutions and increase transparency and public participation in forest management, a critical area given that the Peruvian Amazon is twice the size of California and home to numerous indigenous peoples, who depend on the rainforest for their survival.
However, Legislative Decree 1015 has actually undermined indigenous communities’ abilities to protect their traditional territories and undermined the collective ownership of that land, a fundamental principle for native peoples, by allowing the community to sell off the land with a simple majority vote, regardless of how many members of the community actually participate in the ballot.
This and a range of other decrees and reforms by the Garcia administration breach Article 18.3.2 of the FTA, which states that both the US and Peru recognize that it would be “inappropriate to encourage trade or investment by weakening or reducing the protections afforded in their respective environmental laws”.
Indigenous peoples of Peru also charge that the Peruvian government is continuing to be in breach of its commitments to protect indigenous culture, lands and health under International Labor Organization Convention 169, to protect indigenous rights, and of which Peru is a signatory.
Their demands include:
• No more oil or gas concessions on indigenous lands;
• Full adherence to ILO 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
• The cancellation of Legislative Decree 1015 and full respect for the collective nature of indigenous lands;
• The creation of a fund for sustainable development for indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon.
The US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement was largely opposed by major indigenous peoples’ organizations in Peru, Peru’s labor federations, civil society groups and Peru’s Archbishop, who called on the U.S. Congress to opposed the deal on the damage it is projected to cause Peru’s small farmers and environment. Among others, the trade deal includes investor rights provisions that would allow foreign companies to skirt Peruvian law and regulatory authority.
